BROWSE Columns
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beady-eyed child staring at the gemstone goddess, clasped hands in devotion
pressed holy water to hushed lips & the priest smeared her with the red of his devotion
waiting to join a father oceans away, who spends the day studying, & at night, sponges the dishes
for dimes to pay, paving his new path, he pens letters for her to read like routine devotion
like a woman who writes a book of a thousand hymns, who lights a candle at every shrine,
she sings a marigold song before sacrificing a home, holds tight to her god, to her devotion
to her child, who holds tight to the weight of a new world, knowing nothing of its new tongue,
when she tries to speak, the new words tangle in her mouth like braids of hair, she can’t spell
D-E-V-O-T-I-O-N
but she tries & the words untwist themselves over time spent toiling with them, as she tries to answer
her mother with her mother tongue, a moment’s slip, she feels herself slip from cultural devotion
slipped & lost but other things found, she will find others who, like her, have crossed the same borders,
straddling the same divide, they can recite the same scriptures — they know the same devotion
like a man who travels for miles on weekends to see his son, who feeds his ailing wife her last
meals like soundless supper prayers, fending her fear of death, for her, because that is his devotion
a kind that replicates itself across generations, that is remembered without verbal affirmations,
or the slightest of incantations, the American immigrant’s obligation, it is an intrinsic devotion
of shadow-puppeteer parents who pull the strings, hiding tears behind smiles, heaving sighs
under the wrinkles of their eyes, like the thread bound around their wrist, prevailing, their devotion
as you sit here, pondering over family & the little acts that go unnoticed, the little acts of love &
sacrifice that persist without regard or limit, seamlessly strung into a silent garland of devotion
